Farnham man Richard Ratcliffe has been awarded the Campaigner of the Year award at the Civility in Politics Awards in London after his tireless campaign to free his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in Iran.

The annual awards ceremony aims to reward and encourage thoughtful, reflective and co-operative public debate. More than 200 nominations were received for this round of the awards.

Mr Ratcliffe, who grew up in Farnham and still has family in the area, said: “This award is a great honour. But also a real surprise – not just because of how amazing the others on the shortlist are. But also because campaigning for stories like Nazanin’s and mine involves living in a bubble, coping in compartments – only selectively noticing the world outside.

“It’s only after that you start to realise the care beyond, that you see the shared tears in officials’ eyes.

“Yet it always takes a village to get someone home, to face the biggest problems. Our family is indebted to so many people – who took our problem onto their shoulders, and together over the years got the government to listen.

“For everyone out there who sometimes loses faith that the world can’t be changed, for me this Award will always be a reminder that this year you all changed ours.”

The judges said: “Richard Ratcliffe’s tenacious campaigning for years challenged a succession of government ministers. Determined, respectful and resolute the judges agreed with the judgment expressed in parliament on the day of Nazanin’s release, ‘he has raised the bar for husbands everywhere’.

“Richard’s nominators praised his ‘respectful, dignified campaigning to free Nazanin’, highlighting it had ‘brought about a quiet revolution in the way in which political hostages are talked about around the world’.

“Even when careless words by Boris Johnson caused a new court case to be brought against his wife in 2017, Ratcliffe allowed himself ‘no space for rage’.

“That is not to say that he has kept his head down; on the contrary, he worked tirelessly to keep his wife’s plight in the public eye and to get politicians to feel the urgency of her situation.”

Nazanin was released in March, almost six years after her arrest in Tehran.